Conflict Resolution at Work: Ditch Weak Talk, Build Trust

In this insightful conversation, Julie Holunga discusses the impact of cultural experiences on leadership and communication. She emphasizes the importance of language in leadership, highlighting how weak phrases can undermine authority. The discussion also explores gender dynamics in communication, particularly how women are often judged differently than men. Julie provides strategies for effective conflict management and the significance of psychological safety in teams. Finally, she advocates for deliberate leadership, encouraging leaders to pause and consider their communication approach to foster a more professional environment.

Takeaways

• Living in different cultures fosters curiosity about people.
• Awareness of language can enhance leadership effectiveness.
• Weak language can strip away a leader's influence.
• Replacing apologies with gratitude can shift dynamics.
• Women often face different judgments in communication than men.
• Conflict is often avoided due to lack of training.
• Recognizing conflict is the first step to resolution.
• Focusing on mutual goals can lead to constructive outcomes.
• Comfort in the workplace can lead to underperformance.
• Deliberate leadership requires pausing to consider others' needs.

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• Website: santiagotacoronte.com
• LinkedIn: Santiago Tacoronte

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Transcript

0:02

Juli Holunga, welcome to Productivity! Thank you for having me. I'm excited for our conversation in Santiago. Julie, you have worked in Boston, Paris, New Delhi, Calgary, and I don't know how many other places, Denver, where you're from. How have these moves and being in touch with all these cultures shaped your perspective on leadership and effective communication? It certainly has made me pretty curious about people and in living in different cultures and seeing how people live so differently has really brought this curiosity out in how people got to where they are. What happened along the way? What steps? None of us are on this linear career path anymore. uh And really, what are those experiences that help them? get to where they are today. In your TED talk, you say that you will, you admitted that you were using weak language early in your career. What was the turning point the time you said like, well, I need to stop saying this kind of things. What clicked in your head? Yeah, so I had this phenomenal uh leader that I worked with in my first role at Harvard University and uh he pointed it out and and you know, I was very young and he's he said like you don't need to apologize. You don't need to put yourself in this. What I refer is this my language is this one down position of being less than whoever you're speaking with and that I hadn't. noticed it. didn't, I wasn't even aware that I was doing it. And most of the people that I talk with don't realize that they're doing it. So it was that moment that first got me thinking, I've got to be conscious and aware of the language that I'm using, the tone that I'm using. And, and it took a while for me to get to the point that I truly felt comfortable because I had studied this. had researched, I had coached others on it. But it really started with my own awareness, which I think a lot of us as business owners or entrepreneurs, you see a problem in yourself or a need that you have and then you change it. So that was what started, but it was probably a decade or more later where I finally felt confident and I know what to do instead. I know there's this problem. I knew that was always there. What do I do? How do I change this? What are the most common weak phrases you hear from leaders today? And I'm guessing those change with time. And how are these actually stripping away their influence? Yeah, so the biggest ones, well, there's so many, but the biggest ones that I hear is people apologizing when it's not their ah situation or it's not the circumstances for them to own that apology, right? If someone, what I hear often is, for instance, Santiago, you make a mistake or you don't, let's say you don't get me information that I need for a report on time. And so your information is not included. And I apologize to you because you made a mistake and you missed the deadline, right? Because I often hear that when someone misses a deadline, for instance, let's say we work and we're providing information to a board for a board meeting and you don't get me the information in time. So that information isn't included in what we send out to the board. And you're mad and you're angry and you're frustrated. And if I apologize to you, because I'm sensing that anger and frustration, then I am owning your mistake. So by saying, I'm sorry that you feel that way, I'm sorry that I had to send the information off, I'm owning something that's not my fault. And it puts me in this one down position. And if I am your peer, or I am senior to you, or I'm junior to you, I am unable to influence you if I put myself in that one down position. So that's one certainly think about what you're apologizing for. The other ones that I hear a lot are things that are conditional. think of phrases like I think we should do x, y, z. I believe this this could work. You know, just this conditional language that isn't demonstrating confidence or certainty. So even if you're doubting, you're making a recommendation, let's say, I think we should do X, Y, and Z. That doesn't demonstrate confidence. So if you are a consultant, if you're an accountant, if you're an attorney, where someone's paying for your knowledge, expertise, and experience, and you use that conditional language, What's going through their mind consciously or not is does this person know what they're talking about? I'm paying them $500, know, uh thousand euros per hour to give me recommendations. I really want them to know and feel confident in that recommendation they're giving me. So needing to use declarative language as opposed to conditional. So declarative is more I recommend we take this course of action. suggest, given my experience, given the research I've done, I suggest we do X, Y, and Z. If someone's going to push back, and that's often what I hear from people, why they use weak language, know, he's the business owner, he knows more than I do. That might be the case, but you're an expert in what you do. So if you are offering recommendations by saying, recommend, I suggest, you're coming from a standpoint of confidence. If they're going to push back, they're going to do it and regardless, better to be in that position of confidence than in this position of weakness and uncertainty. want to abuse your trust a little bit and ask you for some coaching. See, there is one thing that um happens to me every day because I attend a lot of meetings every day. When people come 20 seconds late and tell me and say, I'm sorry for being late. And I tell people nothing to worry about. And some people takes it a bit like, Ooh, so how do you change this habit? How do you tell people that this totally fine? to go to the washroom and be one minute late or you rolling off from your previous meetings, you don't need to apologize for being 20 seconds late. right, right. So what, so this is an opportunity for you to teach them, to coach them. So what, I'm gonna practice here, you're gonna hear it. What I recommend is instead of, to teach people, instead of apologizing, to replace that with thank you. So if they are a minute late, thanks for your patience. You know, I've been back to back today and I had to take care, I had to go get some water, whatever it is. to switch I'm sorry with thank you. Because there may be on their end, want, they're a punctional type people and they want to be on time. 20 seconds to me is still on time, right? If the clock still says nine o'clock, even if it's past, you know, it's like nine o'clock and 30 seconds, still on time. Or a minute or two late, but thank you for your patience. Or I often hear the example, uh If someone doesn't respond to an email quickly because they've been in meetings all day or they've been at a conference, don't say sorry because you didn't respond immediately. Like maybe it's, you know, my rule personally is within 24 hours. So thank you for my patience and my delayed response. I've been out of office. I've been on a Mediterranean cruise, ah whatever the case may be. So replacing I'm sorry with thank you. Do you think men and women are judged differently when they use the same language? See, I've heard something, I hate that, I need to say it. I need to take it out of my chest. You hear a confident woman speaking and someone will say the classic, she's bossy. huh. Exactly. Yep. And I hear that when I certainly had this conversation with both genders, the women and I will tell you that men struggle with this too. This is not the assumption is that women struggle with it more. And I tend to see women are aware of it. There are men who also struggle with it who are unaware of it. But What the women tell me, I was working with a tech company that has changed its name, but I was working with their women and often it's a male dominated, predominantly male industry. And the engineers, the female engineers said to me, if I start speaking in declarative language, it will come back to my bite me. That was the language they used. And I said, do you mean it's going to come back to bite you? And she said, she was explaining to me that she was on a team of all male engineers and there was a problem in the code. And she looked at it and immediately saw, oh, it's line 502. That's wrong. That's where the issue is. And if she came in and said, I found it, this is the issue. And here's my recommendation. they would have been livid with her and they would have said she didn't use the word bossy she used the word too aggressive. Hmm. And she said, but I see the problem and we're all looking for this tiny nugget in this, you know, in a haystack. And I found it. How is that being too aggressive? Because if her male colleague used the exact same language, they would have praised them. And so women, the way I discuss it is women have a much smaller bandwidth to play in. Hmm. where if they go too low they're considered meek, if they go too high they're considered bossy, too aggressive, too assertive. Where men have a much bigger window to play in, where they're not seen as meek and they're not seen as, I'm trying to think of a nice way to say this, m too difficult to work with. I have another word but I'm not gonna use that. But there that is the reality and it's a double bind that women are in and what the really what makes the difference is in our communication only 45 % is in our actual words of how that communication crop comes across so Another part of it is our body language and the other part is our tone. So that 55 % is body language tone, pace, all these non-verbal modes of communication. So what I recommended to this engineer and to all women I talk to is to pay attention to their tone. And they may slow down that pace slightly to demonstrate a patience. And in terms of the tone, and you might hear it now in me, is to not slow down in a way that you're... People might feel like I'm not an idiot. You don't have to talk slower for me. So it's a slight shift. But to demonstrate that you're listening, to demonstrate compassion and empathy. So it might be including pauses, allowing silence to happen. Also, what people can do is to ask a question. So with this engineer, one of the things that we talked about and worked on is to say, oh, I see the problem. It's line 502. My recommendation is we do x, y, and z. And then to pause and to ask a question. Not a why question, but a what question or a how question. Because why questions elicit a defense mechanism as opposed to a how and a what invites conversation. So it may sound like. How does that sit with you? Mm-hmm. or what does it look like from your perspective? What have I missed? So it starts this conversation where everyone feels engaged. And what I heard from this female engineer on an all male team was initially she got a lot of pushback. And she was, we talked about it. So she was anticipating from who, what they would say. And she's worked with this team for a long time. So she knows. And she anticipated and she kept asking questions and demonstrated that she was truly listening and not one upping them. She was very much present and not we worked on not having mental drafts as I call it, like not being distracted by the thoughts in your head of maybe wanting to defend yourself, but truly being in the moment with them. And after this happened a couple times, their resistance and this defensiveness dialed down. So they got used to her speaking this way. It's not anything that they would ever articulate, articulate that they experienced. They wouldn't be able to. This group of men didn't happen to have the emotional intelligence to do that. That's not to say, I'm not making a blanket statement there, but with this group she was working with, but they got used to. how she started communicating with them in a different way. So she was redesigning that relationship. And she said it was after three or four of these kinds of meetings and these kinds of conversations that they turned over a new leaf and they started to have much better conversations where they didn't say she's too bossy or too aggressive. As a very powerful example, Julie, what is the piece of strong leadership language that instantly signals authority and trustworthiness? Right. So that one is not being using conditional language we talked about, but also coming into a situation, especially if there's conflict and addressing it, right? Saying to someone, I hear your frustration. It doesn't mean you have to agree with them. It doesn't mean that that you're putting yourself down in any way, but you're acknowledging where someone is. and then being able to go into the conversation of my recommendation is it's asking questions so that you're understanding someone's motivations. Right? So if you come in and you say, I recommend we take this course of action and you get that pushback, you're asking those what questions, you know, what does success look like? What do you mean to see instead? So they feel heard because that is the complaint I hear from almost every senior leader I work with is no one listens. No one's understanding where they're coming from, that they're brought into situations that they don't have time to be brought into because people can't handle things themselves and they just want to feel heard. So if you go in practicing asking powerful open-ended questions that you don't know the answer to, which is key, you are demonstrating that you're using that strong leadership language, that you're practicing that not just in the language, but in the course of the conversation, not just in your words, but you know, the whole communication of nonverbal and verbal that we talked about. Let's speak a little bit about conflict. There are very competent leaders, really smart people, that when it comes to conflict... they're a mess. Some of them shut down, some get defensive. Why does that happen? Yes, I'll tell you because none of us, okay, I've probably met one or two people in the, you 10,000 people I've worked with who really enjoy conflict. There might be some who say that, but then as I peel back the onion, they actually admit like they don't mind conflict, but they don't seek it out. So the reason why we tend to sweep it under the rug and then trip on it later on is because one, typically I hear from people, well, I grew up in an environment where we didn't address conflict or I grew up in an environment where we didn't have those hard conversations, whether in their family of origin or in their workplace. Secondly, no one has been taught how to handle conflict. So we think we're doing it right by bringing up the conversation, right? And we're addressing it, but then we're not listening or we're defensive or we're not acknowledging someone else's point of view. So we have really good intentions, but we're not addressing it correctly. The other thing that I hear is that when there is a conflict conversation happening, typically there is one person who doesn't know that conversation is about to happen. So they're taken off guard. Hmm. uh caught off guard in some way. And there are a lot of emotions that run high. the amygdala part of our brain, which is the most primitive part of our brain, sometimes called the lizard brain, is there to protect us. you know, millions of years ago, as we were developing as humans, that part of our brain was saving us from saber-toothed tigers. You know, we all work with some difficult people, but they're not saber-toothed tigers, right? That part of our brain brings up that flight, flight or freeze mentality, right? That it's protecting us. So our natural reaction and response to conflict is that protectiveness. So that's where we get defensive. We wanna defend our position or our decision or what we said. That's a natural reaction. When we recognize that we're in a moment of conflict, we realize, my gosh, I'm in this hard conversation. I wasn't expecting this. As soon as we recognize that, what I always say to people is that recognition is the first thing that needs to come into play. Oh, I'm here. I'm at this middle ground. I'm at this point here. And there's one decision you get to make, just one. Do I want to be on a destructive path? Where I continue to protect myself, defend myself or my decision. Where I might, you know, instigate a little bit, poke the bear and just want to prove myself to be right. Or do I want to take the constructive route where I am trying to collectively solve this problem and I'm focusing on the mutual goals. I'm focusing on wanting to have both of us come out of situation with more understanding. Maybe it's uh a compromise of some case or it may be I'm agreeing that I don't necessarily want to do this, but I know for the greater good, whether that's the team, your customers, your clients, the company as a whole, we're better off going this way. Even if I don't really want to do it, but this is the better option. when we take that constructive path, we're focused on the problem or the task. Whereas on the destructive path, you're focused on the other person. And I may be having thoughts on that destructive path. Santiago always does this. This is what he does. Here we go again. You know, I've always thought he does this like I'm kind of confirming that behavior, where the constructive path, I'm putting us that aside. And I'm staying focused on what is our common goal? What is the end, the desired end goal for us collectively? And if people can flip that switch, it's amazing. It's not an easy conversation, but it's easier and it is definitely more productive. And we're not on that destructive path. We tend to have that conversation over and over and over again. or people say to me, we had this meeting and we're revisiting what we talked about last week. Why do we keep doing this? Because you're on that destructive path and you're not focused on the mutual end result. Do you have a recommendation for people, the thousands of people that listen to this podcast, a good book or something they can go to be better at conflict management and handling conflict? Yeah, I mean, there's so many out there and there are certainly different models. The Thomas Kinkade model of conflict, I really like that model. And of course, like connect with me on LinkedIn, go to my website, because I write about this all the time. And I create short micro learnings for audiences to just be, you know, when they're in the moment of conflict. What do I have to do? What do I have to do differently? I also have a custom uh AI tool that helps people, you know, if they're anticipating, you know, someone calls you and says, Hey, we need to talk about this project and you're anticipating some conflict. This tool is really helpful to help you peel back the onion of your own thoughts, your own biases and uh you know, assumptions that you're making going into a conversation so you have that awareness and then helping you think through not scripted conversation at all but helping you think through what a successful conversation looks like some questions that you can ask so those are some tools that my clients are always responding really well to because it's quick to the point actionable things that they can do right in the moment Let us leave the show notes, some of these tools for people to start. But Julie, Companies and workplaces are all about psychological safety now. Rightfully so. Nobody should be afraid of speaking or doing something. But do you think that too much comfort actually can make teams underperform? interesting. That's a great question. And you know, it's interesting you bring that up because that has been something in the last year or so that has come up with clients, especially generational differences. And now we have four generations in the workforce right now. And what was normal 40 years ago in the workplace feels kind of sticky to those who are entering the generation that the workforce that right now. um And what I talk about with people is to really help them understand where they're coming from. Right? It's this idea of like having that self awareness. So they know, here's a situation that I feel safe. Or here's an individual I don't feel safe with or here are the circumstances that make me feel that I can step up and say, you know, this is something like with the engineer that I gave it. This is a mistake, right? She didn't feel safe to bring it up because she kept getting that pushback and kept it actually came up on her performance review. So she's like, why would I bring up where the mistake is that I'll let them figure it out and it'll take another month because they don't see it. And she wasn't saying that she was better than them in any way, but she saw it. She found that error. um So what, what? I find you to use this word comfort. em The conversation I've been hearing a lot and actually had this conversation yesterday was, are people too comfortable? And is there a certain level of professionalism that is going down? And I've heard that so much over the last couple of years, whether it's in how people show up in terms of their attire. I have a funny story about that one. I've heard it about the comfort in terms of the professionalism in conversation when they're, you know, maybe at a conference and they're out of the office, whether that's a home office or present, you know, with their colleagues and and sharing information that shouldn't be shared. uh There's this client of mine recently called and asked, we talked through, um there was a situation where she had a summer intern who was in between her second, third year of law school. So essentially it's like an eight week interview and this young woman, absolutely brilliant, hardworking, a good writer. showed up to the office wearing um a belly shirt. Like her belly was showing, like a lot of it. This is a pretty high-end law firm. charge $1,000 an hour. And it was completely inappropriate for the setting. She was essentially interviewing for a job. And she was offered a job. is now is it's frustrated because yes, she's brilliant and she knows that she will do well. But there's this other side in addition to her legal knowledge and abilities that she doesn't understand the professional expectations and that no one said anything to her. And so she's about to now start next month working there full time. And how do you have this conversation that ah you can't wear that to work? And, and there's, so she said to me, she's too comfortable. She used the same word because this is totally unacceptable. And so she, I'm now she's tasked a year later to have the conversation of, can't dress that way because the attorneys that she, the partners that she was working with didn't want to have that hard conversation because it's uncomfortable. And what I always remind people is it's uncomfortable in the moment, but you're saving yourself. later down the road to have an even harder conversation. So now a year later, this young woman is going to receive information you can't dress like that. And what my client and I were talking about is that we anticipate she's going to say, why are you telling me this now a year later? Why didn't you tell me last year? Right? And that's a fair response. And so for anyone who's read Daniel Pink's book regret about regrets, I think he interviewed 27,000 people about regrets and the vast majority of the regrets are the things that they didn't do. The conversations they didn't have, the people they didn't ask out on a date, the jobs they didn't take, the things they didn't ask for. So by not having that conversation, you're making things harder for yourself and for people down the road. You know, for the recipient. uh I was leading a class on feedback a couple weeks ago and I had someone in the class say to me, know, if I take 20 minutes out of my day to have this hard conversation and give this feedback, that's 20 minutes I'm not spending with my kid. It's a fair point. And so we had this conversation. Okay, what happens if you don't have this conversation? what behaviors don't change. And he said, well, nothing will change. They'll continue as is. I said, OK, a year from now, if you don't take that 20 minutes this week, what's happening? And you know, and I kept pushing and pushing and he said, okay, then I'm having to do more work because this person isn't executing the way I need him to. Instead of then missing out 20 minutes with my kid, I'm missing out hours per week because I'm having to take over that, that task. So that's where that, that comfort, you know, you're, you're trading comfort today. for discomfort, panic, polarization down the road. That's a fascinating story, Julie. We had Lisa Frisha uh talking about Jen's head a few weeks ago here, because when you were talking about this absolutely crazy story, it's a bit crazy that someone showed up uh at a law firm, at a high-end law firm. I wonder, didn't she notice that nobody was dressing like this? But this is where the Cultural differences between generations are completely shocking and sending shockwaves to businesses because I'm sure that for this young lady it was completely fine because she was comfortable and it's absolutely crazy. mean, 10 years, 20 years ago, nobody would have done that. It would have been very uptight going there, but now it's totally okay. yeah, it... I have another million questions about this, but I think we might need to do a follow-up episode on that. Julie, that very example, what can leaders do to stop casually leading, like going with the flow and start leading deliberately and for that person to tell, hey, listen, you look great, but here we don't dress like that. Yeah, and even if you do look great, it's not appropriate. And the funniest part, I just have to say that's one part, is they're in this beautifully recently redone, very modern law office. So that is like this complete disconnect. But so what can leaders do? I talk about, I like this, how you describe it. I talk about what I'm seeing, the challenges that I'm seeing in leadership right now is that leaders are unintentionally practicing lazy leadership because we're most people are going meeting to meetings they have the jobs of really one and a half people you know in terms of responsibilities there's so much on their plates they're you know constantly switch tasking right going making a decision then going to the next meeting making a decision and what I ask for all leaders in order to be a deliberate leader and practice deliberate leadership is to pause. That's it. Just pause. In the moment, I see someone wearing a belly shirt, pause. What do I need to do? Or what do I need to ask someone else to do? Right? Do I need to delegate this? Is it something I need to take on? Just pause and think about what does this person need to hear? Not what do I need to say? But what does this person need to hear? And I find when people can pause, and it's five seconds, just take yourself out of the moment of going, going, going, going, going, and step out of this situation. What do I need to do here? What needs to be said? What do they need to hear? And I teach people what I call the titanium rule. So it's built on the golden rule, which we all know. ah And I built on this so the titanium rule is speak to others the way they want and need to be spoken to. So get out of your head and think about what does Santiago need to hear right now to change his behavior or to keep doing what he's doing. Right? Like that's you know when we say to someone ask for feedback and they're like you're doing great. That's nice to hear, that feels good, but I don't know what I'm doing great and what to keep doing. So if you pause when someone asks you for feedback and you think for a second, oh, Santiago asked a really good question. That's what I'm going to say. You're doing great. I love the questions you ask or I love how I'm really appreciative how you handle this difficult situation or a difficult customer or client. And try to be specific. And I could go on for another hour about what people can do. But the big thing is to pause and to think of that titanium rule. Julie, where can our listeners know more about you, get in touch uh and use your services and see your amazing videos and TED Talks? Yeah, so definitely connect with me on LinkedIn. And I have videos every week short, as I said, micro learnings, a monthly article that comes out in a newsletter that's a quick read that is helping people think a little bit differently, also give them some tools that they can try. And certainly my website have a lot of content on there to help people either give some advice, but also to help people understand. how they can work with me in terms of facilitating retreats or working with teams at their monthly meetings to help address all the issues that we've been talking about today and making it really, how do you reduce friction and build trust while reducing conflict? Conflict's never gonna go away, but reducing it. And I come in as a true partner around leadership and culture to help redirect the ship. Julie Holunga, thank you so much for this very insightful conversation. I'm taking one thing away. eh Tomorrow when I have my meetings, my one-on-one, I'm going to pause. I'm going to move and I'm going to pause, think, and try to give those messages in the best way possible. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you, Santiago.